The story of this land

Aaron Bird Bear, the UW–Madison School of Education assistant dean of student diversity, is a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. He’s been leading cultural landscape tours since 2003.

As the sun sets behind Dejope residence hall, Aaron Bird Bear stands before a group of students seated around the building’s sacred fire circle, a gathering place and monument honoring Wisconsin’s Native American tribes. First, he greets them in Ho Chunk, the language of the mound-builders whose history in Madison dates back thousands of years. Getting no response, he tries Ojibwe, the language used for trade in the Great Lakes region; then French, the language of the fur trappers and missionaries who came to Wisconsin in the 1600s; and finally English, the language of the colonists and the Americans who attempted six times to forcibly expel the area’s indigenous people from their ancestral homeland.

“You’re sitting in the middle of what should be a world heritage site,” he tells the students. “But it’s not, because of the attitudes people had about those who were living here.”

For the past 15 years, Bird Bear has led the First Nations Cultural Landscape Tour, a program he helped develop in 2003 to help Native American students “see themselves” on campus. Sponsored by the UW-Madison School of Education, the tour later expanded to include non-Native students and community members. It’s proven remarkably popular: Bird Bear and Omar Poler, UW-Madison’s American Indian Curriculum Services coordinator, lead groups on about 80 tours per year. “Once you go on the tour, you can’t unsee the landscape,” Bird Bear says. “It permanently alters your perception of this place.”

With 12 tribes in Wisconsin (11 that are federally recognized nations), the state has the greatest indigenous diversity east of the Mississippi River. There are six Native American languages spoken here, representing three distinct language families. It’s a cultural and linguistic marvel, but Poler says people today are unaware of the area’s unique history. “Most people come out of their schooling with, at best, a third-grade understanding of First Nations,” says Poler, a Sokaogon Chippewa. “It’s often shocking for participants to learn how much they don’t know.”

The students, all freshman residents of The Studio learning community in Sellery Hall, are quiet and reflective. Zoe McCartney, a theater tech major from Fond du Lac, asks a question: “How do you most respectfully speak about native people?”

“What do you mean?” Bird Bear says. “Like terminology?”

“Yeah, like terminology,” she says. The answer isn’t simple or clear cut, Bird Bear explains. The term Native American has fallen out of fashion since 1980s. American Indian is widely used, but the people native to Alaska and Hawaii don’t particularly like the term. First Nations came about more recently and used to refer to indigenous people of Canada, but the U.S. has begun to embrace it too. “They’re all interchangeable, and of course there’s personal preference,” Bird Bear says. “But First Nations is your safest bet.”

Walking up Observatory Hill, the group stops in front of an ancient oak tree. East of the Washburn Observatory and overlooking Lake Mendota are two spectacular earthworks: a bird and a double-tailed water spirit believed to represent the broad spectrum of human sexuality. “It’s the only one of its kind,” Bird Bear says of the water spirit mound. A 2004 archaeological survey revealed that UW-Madison is likely “the most archaeologically rich” campus in the U.S. There are more than 1,000 burial mounds in Madison, but many have been destroyed. “Before, these were seen as something in the way of campus development,” Bird Bear says.

Walking past the mounds, the group stops at another monument — an enormous boulder honoring former university president Thomas Chamberlain. Bird Bear pulls out a copy of the Wisconsin State Journal from 1925 describing the excavation and relocation of the boulder, and the students gasp aloud when they see the headline showing the monument’s original name: “Niggerhead.” The name was later changed to Chamberlain Rock, but Bird Bear says its evolution is representative of how cultural norms have shifted — and how far we have to go.

“Native Americans called the U.S. the great colonial project, but I call it a toddler nation — we’re still stumbling around,” he says. “The struggle for representation is enduring. We’re still trying to find a way to live up to our values of liberty, equality and justice for all.”